Virtual events
Events hosted exclusively online allow for attendees to participate in the comfort of their own homes. This creates a more safe, intimate, and personal experience. They provide a myriad of benefits to both attendees and event organisers. These include worldwide access, increased attendance, higher return on investment, better lead retrieval, reduced travel costs, among many others. Virtual events shifting to the forefront have allowed many to experience their perks and it has become clear that they are here to stay.

Hybrid events
Research conducted by EventMB in 2020 revealed that 71% of event planners stated that they would continue to employ a digital strategy to maintain their virtual audience even after live events return. Furthermore, 67% of them stated that hybrid is the future of events. However, this should not be surprising as hybrid events create a unique, shared experience for both on-site and remote participants.
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They give attendees the choice of whether they want to attend physically or virtually. This allows a tailored experience, customised to their preferred mode of attendance and individual schedule. Without giving up the physical component, they also harness the unique benefits that a virtual format would garner. These include increased scalability, bridging geological barriers, reduced travel cost, among others. This mode of attendance has also been gaining traction and is now more mainstream than ever before.

With physical distancing and airline travel still challenging, many organisations have been forced to host their meetings in a hybrid style. Hoping to improve the hybrid meeting experience for on-site and remote participants, Sandra Whitaker, IT coordinator at the NSW Nurses & Midwives Association (NMA), sought out specialist audio visual supplier Congress Rental Australia to provide a hybrid meeting solution that could boost engagement. Congress Rental assisted them by integrating an automatic camera solution with their desktop microphone system.

Before implementing the automatic camera system, the NMA used a static webcam to stream the video to Zoom. They had already implemented desktop microphones for higher audio quality. Still, they wanted a video solution that could both improve the interactivity and image quality for remote participants and integrate with their existing desktop microphone system.
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“Initially, we were using a Sony Handicam plugged into a streaming device. We then added a webcam set up in the corner of the room. Although the Handicam worked well to capture the meetings chair, the webcam was far from ideal to provide remote participants with a view of the other speakers. It didn’t seem very engaging and made it difficult at times for remote delegates to identify the person speaking,” explains Whitaker. “We were looking for an improvement to our overall AV setup when we came across Congress Rental’s automatic camera solution. It immediately stood out to us as something that we needed to try.”
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“Congress Rental supplied us with desktop microphones in the past and the expertise and level of service they demonstrated then made them a natural choice when we were searching for a new vision solution.” Says Whitaker. “They helped us by guiding us through all of the options available and clearly explaining the benefits and drawbacks of each one.”

Virtual events have gained tremendous prominence over the last few years and this trajectory was rapidly propelled by the global pandemic. Now that many have experienced the powerful potential that virtual events offer, this trend is projected to continue into the future. Whether hosting a short half-hour webinar or a large multi-day virtual summit, it is crucial that virtual events are unique, engaging and interactive for your audience.
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Here are 5 key mistakes that can get in the way of a smooth, successful and memorable virtual event experience.

​Your audience attends your virtual event to gain value, be entertained and interact in a two-way cocreated experience. One of the biggest mistakes event organisers make is delivering content to the audience through a dull, one-way live stream. This will almost guarantee lower audience engagement and retention. Instead, employ technology to enable your audience to directly contribute to the event, make the event dynamic and always bring the focus back to the audience.

The modern audience is time-poor and has a shortening attention span due to an increased number of online distractions. When considering audience engagement and retention, it certainly pays to be succinct. Deliver the information your audience needs in a concise manner, respecting the valuable time they have taken out of their day to participate in your virtual event. Produce insightful and valuable experiences while omitting any unnecessary information.

Connection issues, glitches, and other unplanned interruptions can quickly derail a virtual event and make it hard to regain previous momentum. To avoid this occurring, make sure you have a reliable internet connection, prepare redundancies and have a trained technical team on standby to mitigate any potential problems that may arise.

Your audience are likely to have a busy schedule and may require different modes of participation over the course of your event. Making the event’s schedule flexible and tailored to your audience’s needs can increase engagement. You can make the schedule public, break down the larger event into smaller segments, make the segments available for playback if audience cannot attend them live, among many others.

Just because the event is virtual does not mean it should lack in preparation, production or quality. Prepare speeches, simulate audience interaction sessions, test connections and infrastructure, practice responses to unplanned interruptions and ultimately ensure a smooth and well-practiced execution of your event.

Avoiding these 5 key mistakes will give you the best chance at hosting a memorable, smooth, unique and ultimately successful virtual event. To make sure that you avoid these mistakes it is best to hire a professional team with the right knowledge and expertise.

Congress Rental can provide a comprehensive virtual event solution including:

• Expert support and advice
• Platforms and software to match your needs
• 24/7 live event support
• Pre/post event management

Adding any language to your virtual event has never been as streamlined as it is today. Remote simultaneous interpretation is a solution that merges delegates, professional interpreters, presenters, expert technicians, cutting-edge interpretation equipment, and the platform of your choice. The result is an incredibly refined experience that adds any language to your event in real-time.

You may already have plans to use a traditional video conferencing platform such as Zoom to host your virtual event or meeting, and want to integrate languages into it. This is where a professional language integrations team can help you take the difficulty out of adding languages to your chosen platform.

A language integrations team will help you conquer the challenging aspects of language integrations including:​

• Sourcing qualified interpreters
• Screening their qualifications
• Training interpreters for the event
• Ensuring their equipment and internet connection is up to standard
• Offering live support to overcome technical challenges

Hiring an experienced team allows you to focus on hosting stunning multilingual virtual events.

• Our language integration solution works with any of the existing video-conferencing and virtual-event platforms. Simply tell us which platform you would like to use, and we will seamlessly integrate languages into it.
• ​Congress Rental's language production team will help you source, screen, train, and check the hardware of interpreters. We provide fully trained professional interpreters using hardware and software configured, checked, and tested to maintain accuracy and ensure reliability.​​
• We provide live technical support via our in-house professional production team to mitigate any potential challenges.
• ​We offer an unlimited number of languages, allowing you to expand from Zoom's nine default and only five custom options.
• We offer a customisable set of functions to suit your virtual event's needs, including relay interpretation, interpreter partner chat, interpreter handover, among others.
• We provide uncompressed, low-latency audio feeds, ensuring higher quality audio with a shorter period of delay.
• We actively work to prevent connection issues and downtime through extensive testing, ensuring interpreters' hardware and internet connections are prepared for the event, and setting up hardware redundancies.

Using a professional RSI solution, your event can employ a range of languages and expand its audience while maintaining your original message's accuracy and reliability. With over 20 years of excellence in language solutions, Congress Rental can provide you with a premium end-to-end RSI solution tailored to your event. Talk to one of our producers about what languages you would like to add and get started with your event today.

• Give attendees a greater degree of choice and flexibility for attendance, customised to their preferred mode of participation.
• Use technology to create an engaging and interactive experience for online attendees rather than simply streaming the physical event live.
• Increase the degree of reach and scalability of attendance by removing physical or geological barriers to entry.
• Have a degree of defence against unplanned interruptions with the ability to go fully virtual with short notice.
• Having an online broadcast component for an event has shown to be a powerful sponsorship opportunity.
• Get a great return on investment by increasing attendance without needing to provide extra physical capacity.
• Reduce travel costs and environmental impacts.
• Yield valuable attendance data and produce insights related to the event through the participation of an online audience.

With the increased functionality due to the online component there is an inherent risk of technical challenges. To mitigate this risk the production team must source a strong internet connection and supply live support to deploy solutions to potential technical challenges quickly. With a partner equipped to handle the potential challenges, the benefits far outweigh its risks and afford considerable opportunity to provide an enhanced experience to a larger audience.

Finding a hybrid event partner that can cater to your specific needs can be arduous. Congress Rental can determine your specific needs and develop a custom tailored, comprehensive solution for your hybrid event. We make the experience for your remote audience more immersive using our PTZ cameras, conference microphones, monitors, and lighting. If you are in need of a hybrid event solution, reach out to one of our producers.

Virtual and hybrid events give businesses a way to connect to their target audience without needing to travel. They’re often cheaper, more efficient, and more scalable than in-person events. However, the process isn't as simple as taking an on-site event and then streaming it. There are several things that you must consider to get the most out of your online event. Neglecting to consider or plan for these points will result in a low return on investment and could even leave a negative impression on the participants. We've compiled a list of things to do which will help you create a memorable virtual experience for everyone involved: